OpenAI president says it’s ‘building a family of devices’ for its AI chatbots
In an interview with our friend Joanna Stern on her YouTube channel, OpenAI president Greg Brockman said the company is working on a "family of devices" for interacting with its AI models. However, Brockman didn't confirm reports that one of those devices is a smart speaker OpenAI's rumored to be launching in 2027, or earlier rumors that the device might be a wearable like the Humane AI pin.
OpenAI is no longer content to live inside a chat window.
Greg Brockman, the company's president, told Joanna Stern that OpenAI is "building a family of devices" around its AI models. The phrasing matters. A single gadget would be a product. A family implies a platform, an attempt to control the hardware layer where conversational AI actually meets the user.
The interesting part is what Brockman refused to confirm. He would not validate the rumored smart speaker targeted for 2027. He would not resurrect the Humane-style wearable. He offered no release date, only the deliberately vague promise that consumers can "expect them soon." That silence is itself a signal. OpenAI wants the optionality of multiple form factors without committing to any one of them publicly.
The Jony Ive collaboration sits at the center of this. Brockman was asked whether Apple's lawsuit against OpenAI could disrupt the Ive-led hardware work. His answer was a deflection: "We are focused on o…" The sentence trails off in the available excerpt, but the posture is clear. OpenAI is signaling that legal pressure from a former partner will not redirect its hardware ambitions.
The strategic logic is straightforward. Distribution through phones, browsers, and operating systems built by Microsoft, Apple, and Google is a rented channel. Every query, every token, every user relationship passes through infrastructure someone else controls. Owning the device changes that calculus. It moves OpenAI from a model provider to a consumer-facing company with its own surface area.
The risk is equally obvious. Hardware is a graveyard of well-funded intentions. The category OpenAI appears to be chasing, ambient AI companions, has already absorbed one cautionary tale in Humane. A "family of devices" without a clear anchor product is a strategy that can absorb capital for years without producing revenue.
For now, the announcement functions as a positioning move. OpenAI is telling developers, investors, and competitors that the next phase of the AI race will not be decided solely in the data center. It will be decided on the desk, in the pocket, and on the nightstand, wherever the next interface for these models happens to land.